The nanomesh looks like an assembly of hexagonal pores[3] (see right image) at the nanometer (nm) scale. The distance between 2 pore centers is only of 3.2 nm, whereas each pore has a diameter of about 2 nm and is 0.05 nm deep. The lowest regions bind strongly to the underlying metal, while the wires[3] (highest regions) are only bound to the surface through strong cohesive forces within the layer itself.

The unit cell of the h-BN nanomesh consists of 13x13 BN or 12x12 Rh atoms with a lattice constant of 3.2 nm. In a cross-section it means that 13 boron or nitrogen atoms are sitting on 12 rhodium atoms. This implies a modification of the relative positions of each BN towards the substrate atoms within a unit cell, where some bonds are more attractive or repulsive than other (site selective bonding), what induces the corrugation of the nanomesh (see right image with pores and wires).

The nanomesh corrugation amplitude of 0.05 nm causes a strong effect on the electronic structure, where two distinct BN regions are observed. They are easily recognized in the lower right image, which is a scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurement, as well as in the lower left image representing a theoretical calculation of the same area. A strongly bounded region assigned to the pores is visible in blue in the left image below (center of bright rings in the right image) and a weakly bound region assigned to the wires appears yellow-red in the left image below (area in-between rings in the right image).

The right image shows the boron nitride nanomesh measured by STM at 77K, where each "ball" represents one N atom. The center of each ring corresponds to the center of the pores.

The left image is the theoretical calculation of the same area, where the N height relative to the underlying substrate is given. The exact arrangement of Rh, N and B atoms is given for three different areas (blue: pores, yellow-red: wires).

Naphthalocyanine molecules evaporated onto the nanomesh. They only adsorb in pores, forming a well-defined pattern.

The nanomesh is stable under a wide range of environments like air, water and electrolytes among others. It is also temperature resistant since it doesn't decompose up to 1275K under vacuum. In addition to these exceptional stabilities, the nanomesh shows the extraordinary ability to act as a scaffold for metallic nanoclusters and to trap molecules forming a well-ordered array.

In the case of gold (Au), its evaporation on the nanomesh leads to formation of well-defined round Au nanoparticles, which are centered at the nanomesh pores.

The STM figure on the right shows Naphthalocyanine (Nc) molecules, which were vapor-deposited onto the nanomesh. These planar molecules have a diameter of about 2 nm, whose size is comparable to that of the nanomesh pores (see upper inset). It is spectacularly visible how the molecules form a well-ordered array with the periodicity of the nanomesh (3.22 nm). The lower inset shows a region of this substrate with higher resolution, where individual molecules are trapped inside the pores. In addition, the molecules seem to keep their native conformation, what means that their functionality is kept, which is nowadays a challenge in nanoscience.

The substrate is kept at a temperature of 796 °C (1070 K) when borazine is introduced in the vacuum chamber at a dose of about 40 L (1 Langmuir = 10−6torr sec). A typical borazine vapor pressure inside the ultrahigh vacuum chamber during the exposure is 3x10−7mbar.

After cooling down to room temperature, the regular mesh structure is observed using different experimental techniques. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) gives a direct look on the local real space structure of the nanomesh, while low energy electron diffraction (LEED) gives information about the surface structures ordered over the whole sample. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) gives information about the electronic states in the outermost atomic layers of a sample, i.e. electronic information of the top substrate layers and the nanomesh.